April, 2014 archive
Theft of Services 0
John Romano struggles to understand how public school funds are being fed to private corporations in Florida. A nugget:
They insist accountability is the key to all that is magical in education, then steer students and tax money to private schools that have no formal accountability.
They insist charter and public schools be treated equally, then hand charters 97 percent of the state’s capital outlay funds even though charters make up less than 15 percent of the schools.
They insist they are watching out for your tax dollars, and yet flush millions down the toilet as charter schools run by for-profit corporations go belly-up every year.
Money that goes into profits does not go into education, folks.
Twits on Twitter 0
When I have to fly somewhere, I do everything I can to avoid Allegheny Airline U. S. Air U. S. Airways, because, call it what you may, it’s still Agony Airlines.
Turns out, they can’t ever twit properly.
Women and Children First! 0
Republican Family Values in action.
Facebook Frolics 0
Shooting your mouth off on the internet is still shooting your mouth off.
That is a corollary to “Freedom of speech” does not mean “freedom from consequences.”
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness starts with the young.
The New Secesh 0
The Party of Lincoln becomes the party of Jefferson Davis.
That will be the question for Wisconsin Republicans at next month’s convention.
Earlier this month, the party’s Resolutions Committee voted in favor of a proposal that says the state party “supports legislation that upholds Wisconsin’s right, under extreme circumstances, to secede.
Via C&L, where John Amato points out
As I recall, Lincoln considered secession to be treason. The Republican Party’s embrace of racism now clearly borders on treason.
Another Tale from the Taker Frontier 0
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Bundy affair. If not, TPM has a nice little summary.
The short version is that a rancher stole from the government–that is, you and me–for almost two decades by grazing his cattle on public property, while ignoring repeated requests, followed by court orders for payment. When the government started to confiscate his cattle that were illegally on public property, the rancher went all John Wayne and threated a range war. Wingnuts grabbed up their AK-47s and rushed to fill his army. At last report, the government has backed down from aggressive enforcement to avoid bloodshed, though I suspect it’s not over yet.
Bob Cesca cuts to the hypocrisy (emphasis added):
(snip)
All we hear every day from the far-right is about how food stamp and welfare recipients are unfairly sucking from the government tit . . . . And yet there they were, lined up with horses, guns and cowboy drag, marching toward armed BLM rangers in the name of defending an actual freeloader who’s bilked American taxpayers out of millions.
Afterthought:
“Cowboy drag.” That pretty much sums it up.
Not Your Father’s Republican Party 0
Dick Polman remembers the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, particularly how Everett Dirksen, Republican Senator from Illinois, made it possible by leading Republican Senators to support the bill.
He points out that it wouldn’t have happened today.
Do please read the rest.
All the News that Fits 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., is fed up with cable news and, especially with CNN.
But then, Ed and Uncle Walter have left the building, haven’t they? And yes, maybe they had the luxury of regarding the news as a public service, a sacred trust, consonant with Thomas Jefferson’s belief that an informed electorate was vital to a self-governing nation. But you have no such luxury. What you have is a 24/7 news cycle and the need to fill it – if not with news, then speculation, if not speculation, then controversy, if not controversy then opinion, if not opinion, then froth.
Fine. But this is not a trend without impact, CNN. We are becoming a stupider people. You see it in test scores, but you see it more viscerally in the way some of us equate higher volume with sounder logic, wear party as identity, refuse new information that challenges old beliefs, act as if everything must entertain us. Even the news.
I think the only time I have watched CNN for more than five minutes was when Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac over 30 years ago. I was living in Arlington, Virginia, about four miles in a straight line from the crash site; I’d had a grueling drive home in the same snowstorm–about an hour and a half to go 30 miles on I-66 and US 50–from a meeting in Manassas; the boss ended the meeting early because the weather had turned bad. I had to clean ice off my windshield wipers half a dozen times on the way.
The crash was local news and CNN was on top of it.
Some More Boids 0
Some more pictures from my brother on Virginia’s Northern Neck:
